Return of the Comet
by Srgt Wilco
Summary: No matter how hard we try, our past, and our future, will always catch up to us. T for violence, character death.


_A/N: Well, here it is, my contribution to the highly underdeveloped realm of Avatar Science Fiction. The first two chapters are introductions, but after that, I'll get on with the character-driven part of the story (some of whom, as mentioned earlier, will die). Anyway, enjoy, review, and if you happen to work for Nickelodeon – **Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar**_

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Silence. For eons upon eons, that was all that the Facility had known - silence. Buried deep beneath the earth's surface, hermetically sealed and thoroughly disinfected by its creators, silence was, for this stretch of time, all it was ever supposed to know. Silence save for one thing: the lowest of hums coming from the smallest of generators, which had been maintaining the tiniest level of power to keep one single device functioning properly for a period of time measuring several million years. The device was a computer; almost quaint in its simplicity - in practice, the world's most energy efficient timing clock. And now, the timer, whose function had been carefully and precisely maintained for a time greater than that of every human civilization put together, had gone off.

The Facility was silent no longer. A jolt of stored energy went to its main reactor, which burst into life and began to distribute power throughout the complex. Almost immediately after that, a boring shaft activated and began to drill its way out of the mountain it had been buried under for so long. Waiting behind it was a menagerie of automated probes and exploration vehicles - one to test the air for any kind of lethal contaminant; one to launch itself into orbit and survey the gradually shifted geography of the planet; one to test the soil, to see if it was once again fertile. Once these and countless other items of data had been collected, they were relayed back to a great artificial intelligence programmed into the Facility's mainframe. Carefully observing and judging, it determined that, after all these years, its primary function could at last be safely executed.

In another part of the Facility, new activity began: hundreds upon hundreds of ova, kept in stasis throughout the duration of the silent times, began to undergo fertilization. There was a significant rate of failure in the process, but that was to be expected - human life was never perfect; some cells, no matter how carefully preserved, would always die after such a long stretch of time. All that mattered was that some did survive. Throughout a period of nine months, embryos grew in artificial wombs. Outside, worker drones began to experiment in cultivating the land with local crops, while more familiar fare was grown safely inside the Facility. When the nine months were up, the embryos - now fully-formed human infants - were placed in four separate sections of the Facility. Here began the final stages of the Facility's programmed function: the education and mental development of a generation of Man begun entirely from scratch. Many an hour of debate had been spent by the creators of the Facility as to how to handle this stage. Optimally, an older, more experienced generation of surrogate parents would've been put in stasis alongside the ova, but the latter had been difficult enough to maintain for the time required, and that was only one cell - to say nothing of a complex, living, breathing organism. In the end, they were forced to resort to artifice. But they made the most of it. The most advanced, lifelike AI's available had been employed as caretakers, of sorts - partnered with robotic "nannies," they guided and nurtured the newly-resurrected species through its infancy and into childhood, and from childhood into young adulthood. Throughout that period, they were given education in everything mankind had spent centuries learning on his own - how to speak and communicate, how to write and read the writing of others, how to make tools, how to hunt, how to farm, how to build - and one other crucial skill: how to bend.

This had been another subject of intense debate, and it had also been a significant risk, but in the end, it was decided to be the most logical path to take for the Facility to truly fulfill its purpose. Malcontent, it was argued, was the entire reason for humanity's downfall in the first place - cavemen were lacking in ways to kill their next meal, so they fashioned the first weapons - axes and spears. But Man began to tire of the limited nature of these weapons, so he made swords and longbows. Still obsessing over these weapon's flaws, he made guns, and tanks, and poison gas, and when he was through with those? The Atom Bomb, and the Hydrogen Bomb, and the artificial plagues, and neurotoxins that could travel hundreds of miles by air, and then kill anything that breathed in seconds. The Facility's primary function, as dictated by its creators, was to ensure the continued survival of the Human species. Part of that meant giving Man a way to avert another act of self-destruction. And so, the problem was to be cut off at its source: if Man was given only another stone axe, he would again become malcontent and start the whole cycle over again. But if he was given that and something else; some natural ability to compensate for his lack of "adequacy" in weapons-making, then perhaps he wouldn't be as tempted to once more lead himself into the apocalypse. And so, every embryo grown in the Facility was genetically imprinted with a gift - the ability to manipulate and control the various forces and energies present in the natural world, and in so doing, bend to their will the very earth, air, water, and fire around them.

This "Bending", as it was called, became a source of almost religious pride and devotion among its practitioners - as well as a highly effective forge for nationality and unity between Benders of various elements. Even this, the forming of the universally-recognized Four Nations, had been planned out in advance: Imposing the banner of one nation over the world would lead to massive, widespread rebellion in the stretch of a few years, ending with the fracturing of the one nation into a collection of countless, disorganized city-states. Similarly, leaving man to his own devices in the forming of countries would have the world as a collection of countless, disorganized city-states from square one, followed soon after with an endless series of "unification" attempts by the states with the largest armies. The problem with both of these situations was that someone, either a rebel or a dictator, would feel compelled to change them, and would engage in bloody conflict to see their goals accomplished. And yet again, Bending would help to ease this problem: By holding the Bending Arts at near-religious importance; stressing unity between benders of one element and, above all, balance between the four as a whole, a convenient set of four equal superpowers would form themselves. If there was any luck, the philosophy of Balance would catch on with the leaders and the citizens of these nations, perhaps providing the voices necessary to stop any truly devastating conflict before it had even started.

Eventually, once Man had built a strong enough population and mastered the skills necessary for his survival, he was removed from the nest of the Facility and taken to the four corners of his new Continent. The Facility continued to monitor Man in his new home, and once it had become content of his strength, executed its final command: all of its probes were recalled, the tunnel connecting it to the outside world was demolished, and slowly but surely, the Facility began the process of its own destruction. This was something that, however unfortunate, had to be done: Mankind could never be allowed to tempt himself back down the road to mass destruction, and that meant that, once his civilization had been established, he could never know of an existing technology higher than his own. With luck, the memories of the Facility and its mechanized caretakers would fade into myth over the years, but if the Facility itself were to be rediscovered - along with, for instance, its nuclear reactor - it would shorten Mankind's lifespan by thousands of years. Contrary as it may have been to some of the brighter philosophers of the First Man, the new generation would have to be kept in the dark regarding higher technology if the species as a whole was to survive. But, as tragic as the system was, it worked: Mankind grew from his first few settlements, bloomed, and eventually prospered. Rebellions were few and far between, as were armed conflicts between nations. And though Man's strides in technology were next to nothing compared to his ancestors', his civilized reign commanded a longevity of over forty-five thousand years - in turn, an area in which his ancestors accomplished next to nothing. Longevity, however, is not synonymous with immortality. Just as the individual human must die eventually, so must, in one way or another, his species. The Facility's creators had hoped that, when this time came, it would be by some natural cause - a sufficiently large asteroid for instance, or even a rogue planet - or if luck was truly on their side, the eventual, inevitable destruction of their own sun. Death, as things turned out, would indeed come from the skies, but it would not be direct - only a catalyst for an eventual Armageddon. But most surprisingly, the death-dealing object would be anything but natural. Just as the Facility, a relic of Mankind's dead civilization, had remained buried under the earth for so many millions of years, other relics of Man's darker side had remained intact as well. Some were buried and sealed in a similar manner by nations wishing to keep their stockpiles safe from destruction, while others stayed suspended in geosynchronous orbit above the planet's atmosphere, their crews long dead from nerve gas or failure of life support. These, however, had been anticipated beforehand, and the utmost of care was taken during the Facility's first months of activation to root them out and erase them from the earth. Most of them were. Most. But not all.


End file.
